A Tale of Two Sons

Last Friday I started feeling very ill. We went out for breakfast at 6:30 a.m., the only time we could all celebrate Tucker's birthday, and I could hardly eat.
My throat hurt, my head hurt and my nose was stuffy. I came home from school for an hour break to rest and never made it back to the staff meeting. I felt too miserable. I lay on the couch as Earl left for work and the boys came home from school.
When I asked, Spencer brought me a glass of water and some ibuprofen.
I pulled myself off the couch to serve birthday cake to five boys who then cleared out quickly.
Before he left, Spencer said, "Mom, do you need anything before I go out?"
I told him no and he leaned over to kiss me in my cocoon on the couch.
I got sicker before I started to get better. Stiff neck, vomiting, chills.
By Sunday, I was sitting up at the kitchen table when Tucker wandered in for lunch.
Tucker began shoveling down his tomato soup and grilled cheese then he turned to me, "Are you sick, Mom?" he asked, surprise in his voice.
It took him three days to notice.
Those are some very different boys I'm raising.

Adapting

My friend Stephanie teared up on Saturday when she talked about her daughter going back to college. She couldn't think about it, much less bear to watch her leave the house and return to the college two hours away.
It's times like this, that I realize I may be lacking in some basic emotions. It's not like I love my kids any less, I'm just not overly emotional about them heading off to college or France or wherever their lives take them.
I've hypothesized before that I'm less emotional about it because I homeschooled them and I feel like I've spent plenty of hours getting them prepared for life beyond home. But I think something else has helped prepare me too.

Three years ago in March, my husband found out that the newspaper was laying off employees. We found out the next day that Earl wasn't laid off, but he was moved to the evening shift. This left him home during the day. Since I am an adjunct college teacher, I'm sometimes home during the day too. We had to learn how to adapt to new schedules and learned how to enjoy time together while the kids were gone to school.
Sometimes we walk downtown to get coffee, other times we venture out for lunch or ride our bicycles. Sometimes, we just watch sitcom reruns. We've remembered what we enjoyed about each other before the kids came along.
I think this alone time together has helped prepare me for the empty nest that is coming. This year Spencer will graduate and head off to college. Two years later, Tucker will follow suit. Then, unless Grace comes home after college, Earl and I will be home alone throughout the school year.
The idea is certainly different. No basketball games or swim meets or musicals or orthodontist appointments. No big shoes strewn across the kitchen floor. No pile of wet towels waiting to be washed. And no one to stretch up to on tiptoes so I can kiss their stubbly cheeks goodbye as they head out the door for school.
I imagine that if Earl is still working evenings, cooking dinner will go by the wayside. I'll probably settle for a bowl of cereal or a salad.
Even as I strain to hear the back door slam with the approach of oncoming teenage boy feet home from school, I don't feel teary at the idea they'll have moved on.
I'm not a martyr taking a stiff upper lip as they move on, and I'm not so selfish that I can't wait until they go. It just feels right that the kids take up new challenges. They live in a college dorm full of other tall boys and girls who dance and watch Disney films. They are busy carving out their own niches now.
And luckily, I'll still have days filled with my husband and dreams of traveling to exotic places.

Blueberry Syrup and Coffee Kind of Day

Saturday was one of those Mom days. I got up early to make blueberry syrup -- tripled the recipe and poured it into the Crock Pot so it would stay warm for the basketball players' breakfast. We went to the school cafeteria at 9 to set up the waffle makers. We had six waffle makers and my friend Jane mixed up the batter with Bisquick. I know, I've never used a waffle mix. I just use flour, milk, eggs. She wanted to buy the mix so I acquiesced.
About 9:40, we started plugging in waffle makers to do test waffles before the boys got there at 10. I plugged three waffle makers into one outlet, three in another. Then I noticed the light on the power strip had gone out. We tried some other outlets but saw that the breaker had knocked them out too. We moved to another corner of the room, moving tables again. This time, we blew the circuit and the pop machines there gave a gurgle before they stopped working, the lights flickering out.
A shelf held two microwaves. We lugged those away and plugged the waffle makers into the dedicated circuit, after blowing one more outlet.
Finally, we were able to operate three waffle makers and fed the 25 boys who were very polite and claimed we had the best breakfast spread yet.
After cleaning up, I returned home long enough to eat a waffle before driving an hour away to a swim meet. The swim meet lasted six hours.
I drove the hour back, dropped Grace off at home, picked Tucker up from the bus, dropped him at home and went to a basketball game to watch Spencer.
See, a totally Mom day. Nothing was about me.
While I was at the swim meet for six hours, I started reading a new book -- one of those I keep in the car for just such occasions. The book is called The Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella.
The title was appropriate because Grace had purchased white mochas for both of us on the way to the swim meet. The mochas tasted sweet and thick with a hint of bitter espresso.
I started the book, wedged into a corner of the pool area, my eyes burning from the chlorine and my straight hair beginning to frizz in the humidity.
"Oh, I don't like this kind of narration," I commented to Grace as I read the first page. It begins with an Dickens-esque narration as "we" watch the character traipsing down the street.
The narration changed to first person in the next chapter and I began to find things that made me chuckle, so I read them to Grace.
Then I came to a section that made me fold down the page so I could find it again.
The main character, a foppish man who lives in London after flunking out of Oxford in the late 1800s, considers himself a poet. He meets a coffee merchant who wants the poet to help determine the language for describing coffee so he can standardize it.
In the coffee merchant's office, they have a discussion because the merchant has been unable to find any of the poet's work in the bookstores. The coffee trader explains:

"...A merchant is someone who trades. Ergo, if I do not trade, I am not a merchant."
"But a writer, by the same token, must therefore be someone who writes," I pointed out. "It is not strictly necessary to be read as well. Only desirable."

"What?" I squawked.
I read it to Grace and we cracked up.
That means I'm a writer. I don't have to be read to be a writer, but it is "only desirable."
So, the next time I question whether I'm a writer, remind me, all it takes to be a writer is writing.

Swim World

While all around me here in Ohio people are obsessing about basketball, my weekend is all about swimming.
They call it March Madness and it's the college basketball tournament. Everyone, even people who care nothing about basketball, predict the winners of the 64-team tournament. Then they watch the results, suddenly invested because of those brackets they filled out.
As for me, I'm in a hotel room near Bowling Green State University for the biggest swim meet in the region. It's called the Great Lakes Zones and includes swimmers from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia. My kids events are conveniently timed so that they swim only one or two per day -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Both Grace and Tucker have dropped time on each event they have swum, so I guess it's a success. As for me, I am scrambling to finish grades which are due today and after I finish this swim meet Sunday then run to my writer's group on Sunday afternoon and take Spencer to basketball practice Sunday evening, I am taking some time to myself.
I mean it too.